Cleo Manago

Cleo Manago, 44, founder of the Black Men’s Xchange (BMX) and AmASSI National Health & Cultural Centers, is one of the high profile people in the not for profit health, wellness and social services sector. He has written over $11 million in successful grant proposals for programs for services that were targeted for diverse ethnic and sexual communities. His published works have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, California Voice, Essence Magazine, SBC, Venus, and several other noted publications. Here he shares with us what’s on his mind.

Please describe your current or most recent project (s). Include a brief overview of your motivation for the project and any notable challenges you encountered.

First, thank you Mr. Esteem, sincerely, for this interview. Though, I am interviewed often, by a number of different sources, I do not take opportunities to engage my community for granted.

My recent projects include writing and developing a film that examines the intersection of Black male American imagery, sexuality; self and societal perceptions, and the impact of these on life in America - historically and currently. My motivation is the same as it has always been, until meaningful change occurs: improving the unity, perception, self-concept, wellness, structural and cultural imbalances Black people face, and making America aware of the importance of advancing this situation. The challenges have been the main ones always faced by non-mainstream film, acquiring the resources to get it made.

Under what circumstances did you get started as a gay activist?

I am not a gay activist. Never have been, and strongly request not to be referred to as such. I am a Black, same-gender-loving “social architect” and visionary, a researcher, doer, cultural expert and behavior change strategist. Organizations and activities I have headed up purposely dismantle or challenge thinking that is not constructive or instructive to our community. We build community, create dialogue and motivate behavior and attitude change.

What got me started was inspired by my being naturally a very sensitive child, and inquisitive thinker from a very young age. I came from a community and family where internalized oppression, religious contradictions and the symptoms of what I learned to be racism and post-slavery trauma syndrome were rampant. I could not accept things as they were, so I fantasized until I was old enough to actualize doing something about what pained or concerned me. Those issues were more relevant to being Black in America than my sexuality. As early as 8 years of age it was quite clear that I would be falling in love with another male. As a matter of fact by age 8, I already had. There’s a popular autobiographic story I wrote called, In Love Too Early, In Love Too Late, that tells that story.

Recently, Cleo Manago, founder of the Black Men’s Xchange (BMX) and AmASSI National Health & Cultural Centers, reflected about his experience at The Million Man March of 1995 and spoke to the Atlanta Journal Constitution about his experience. Taken from that article, below is Cleo's reflection:

I was a doctorial student at the time. When I heard about the Million Man March, I was very excited. I am a black-community-rights activist, so I have always been very keen about what people who are pro-black do for us, including Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

I was like, a million black men are going to come together in one place? That is unprecedented. Since we have been in this country, as former slaves, we had never come together on our own terms as black men. So I had to go. We needed to talk about things and tap into pains, frustrations and successes. Particularly pains and humiliations that we had not put our voice to. At one point during the march — and there was nobody on stage — we burst into tears. It was father, son, stranger, homosexual, heterosexual. Nobody cared. Brothers were snotting, crying and moaning on each other's shoulders. It made sense to me because we are walking around with a lot of stuff that we inherited from our ancestors that we had not talked about.

What is frustrating to me is that nobody acknowledged our tears from the stage. Very few people, who were organizing or leading the activities, acknowledged our tears. So we were not able to use that to organize black men toward going to another level of being so we could be more functional on a large scale. It was all in the abstract, it wasn't concretely articulated and used as a device to transform black men into being more functional, more thoughtful, more honest about what we are living with and dealing with as black men in this country.

The jails are still filling up. Some of the violence has come back. We have issues like HIV that are resolvable and preventable, but we are so distracted that we don't focus enough sometimes to synthesize our common sense with our behavior.

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December 8, 2008

CLEO MANAGO,LEADING MAN

Acitivist, Cleo Manago is honored as a 2008 Leading Man in Instinct Magazine.

Odetta, the singer whose deep voice wove together the strongest songs of American folk music and became an accompaniment to the black-and-white images of the freedom marchers who walked the roads of Alabama and Mississippi and the boulevards of Washington in quest of an end to racial discrimination, died on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2008 at the age of 77. Read more.